People & Places

At first glance, there’s something vaguely creepy about seeing hundreds of people eating pizza while staring at a guy bathed in colored stage lights as he plays an antique organ the size of a basketball court. It’s sort of Chuck E. Cheese’s meets The Phantom of the Opera by way of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

But give it a few minutes and the genius of the place catches up with its weirdness. This organ and its players are awesome, so awesome that the show is entertaining to everyone from the 3-year-old smearing pizza on his face to the 90-year-old smearing pizza on his face. Indeed, the Organ Stop and its 1927 Wurlitzer is one of the few places where the term “fun for all ages” actually applies.

That toddler will be jazzed by the funky lights, kid-friendly pizza and the enormous sound; meanwhile, your great-grandfather will just be jazzed by hearing genuine musicianship on one of the Valley’s grandest instruments.

In today’s fiercely pigeonholed society, it’s heartening to see a pizza parlor that successfully caters to so many, ahem, slices of life.

This shop is the epitome of what’s so beautiful about the sport and its enthusiasts. It’s independently owned by three skaters in their mid-20s who have put their emphasis squarely on the tools, not the fashion, of skateboarding — more gear than clothes.

And you won’t find snowboarding or, ugh, inline skating paraphernalia. The shop has one focus, skateboarding (well, perhaps two: The motto on its tee shirts reads, “Tonight we drink, Tomorrow we ride”).

Freshly reworked so it’s not cluttered by racks, Sub Society has found a new aesthetic sensibility inside the front door. It’s organized, with one wall of skate decks, one wall of clothing, and a corner dedicated strictly to shoes, plus the requisite couch and TV where skateboarding videos play all day.

The neatness and friendliness of the staff make it parent-friendly, as well. Most representative perhaps is the fact that there’s a chess board set up next to the assembly area; these kids are thinking.

Are you sick of watching your kids blasting away at video games for hours on that $5,000 computer that was supposed to be an educational device — but is actually nothing more than an expensive joy stick? Then unplug the PC and take ’em on down to Game Depot, where an assortment of challenging games and precision models will jar your youngster out of cyberland and into tangible fantasyland.

Once you get over everyone’s original cliché reaction (“This place has got to be for loser geeks with nothing to do!”), you’ll find an array of challenging activities of the real sort. The store welcomes children and encourages play on custom game tables — particularly for Warhammer 40,000 and Magic: The Gathering. The rulebooks for these elaborate games are an inch thick and would confuse the heck out of most adults. But kids who can’t find time for homework can nurture their reasoning skills while plotting attacks with their Warhammer 40K postapocalypse armies that they have spent hours painting in minute detail.

The Depot’s extensive game selection and supplies have become legendary in the ever-evolving fantasy-game market — sans computer.

Most city history museums are a hodgepodge of stuff somebody gave them when the city’s first rich white people died. No context, no narrative, no fun. Just lots of Victorian finery. The kids last maybe 30 minutes.

At the greatly revamped Mesa Southwest Museum, though, all that dull old stuff is now brilliantly weaved into an epic kid-friendly tale of Arizona, a tale that spans some three billion years and includes everything from meteors and trilobites to territorial jails and the making of the movie Wyatt Earp.

The star of the museum is its new Prehistoric Wing, a 40,000-square-foot display that doubled the museum’s space when it opened in May. With giant automatronic dinosaurs and a towering waterfall, the new wing keeps the kids excited and engaged as they digest lots of hard science and history.

The museum also has two galleries that host changing exhibits as well as numerous hands-on programs for kids.

The museum’s hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for children 3 to 12. Children under 3 are free.

An outdoor picnic in the dead of summer?

Hot damn!

First, pack a picnic lunch with lots of cold beverages. Then suit up the kids in their swimming gear, grab the sunscreen and head for Desert Breeze Park.

Ignore the lovely lake surrounded by trees and picnic tables. Instead, head to the children’s playground area. Beneath an earthen berm/overpass/observation deck are an assortment of shaded tables. This covered passageway connects a traditional playground with a “spray pad” where three dolphins and an elephant (climbing structures the rest of the year) squirt water on a cyclical timing system from May to October. Eat, chill, eat, chill — well, you get the idea.

Repeat process as needed through mid-October.

Arizona State University’s campus is the most righteous place to blade, but the cops chase hard-core bladers away because they chip a little cement off benches and tables on daredevil slides and jumps. If you’re tired of the hassle, the place to go for unlimited blade action is the Wedge.

With quarterpipes, lots of grinding rails, some bowls and a whole mother lode of other sweet stuff designed especially for bladers, the Wedge offers plenty of opportunity to bust out with some kick-ass blading moves. The vibe is less intense than the Valley’s two other more skateboard-oriented parks in Phoenix and Chandler, and less intimidating for the preteen set just honing their plates. A few pro skaters practice at the Wedge, adding a layer of luster and inspiration. The park is open every day from dawn to 10 p.m., and it’s free.

These sprawling, two-level facilities go into the category of “Only in America!”

You plunk down $6.50 for 20 minutes, then hang a brightly colored pad that resembles a flotation device around your chest and shoulders. Laser gun in hand, you step into a maze, try to get your bearings, and start firing at other players — up to 30 at a time per session — who also have you in their sights. Loud music (oddly enough, we heard classical piano blaring over the speakers one day instead of the usual thrashy stuff) helps the disorienting effect.

There are numerous nooks and crannies in which to hide — or, if you’re the aggressive type, from which to spring. It all ends in a flash, and a computer printout tells you how many humans you’ve shot, and how many have shot you. What a blast.

Last year, the award in this category went to the city of Tempe’s official Web site, which offers wide views of Mill Avenue — about the only street in the Valley where one regularly witnesses both foot and vehicular traffic.

This year, one Mill Avenue worker bee whose office affords an unobstructed view of the intersection at Fifth Street and Mill Avenue has one-upped ’em with a camera closely focused — 24/7, updated every 30 seconds — on a bench just outside Cold Stone Creamery ice cream and sweet shop.

Chow down, Tempe! You’re on candied camera!

Poor Dave wasn’t very Smiley the day we tuned in to the New Guys morning show and heard him turn on the waterworks while reading a “Dear Dave” e-mail his girlfriend sent him. Not since the Hindenburg crash has such tear-drenched humanity dripped out over the airwaves. On hand to catch his deposits of grief was the nauseatingly reassuring Love Doctor, a Tuesday morning regular who told him it takes a strong man to cry on radio where no one can see you.

It did make the morning drive more riveting than the hackneyed “wacky” fare that he and his partner Greg Simms usually dream up (like polling listeners for “kissable news anchors,” for instance), but frankly we’re too cynical about radio in the year 2000 to think Smiley’s weeping was anything but crocodilian in nature, especially since he snapped back into his “professional” voice so quickly you’d think Don Pardo just walked into the room.

Maybe a marketing group told him the only way to beat Dave Pratt and Howard Stern in the morning ratings was to get disaffected female listeners by becoming a sensitive weeping jock. Or maybe someone just shoved the latest Arbitron numbers under his nose and let the teardrops fall.

For one week each year, the already sex-soaked cable network MTV becomes MT&A, letting it all hang out for Spring Break, shot at some exotic location and featuring nubile college students humping and grinding and sometimes frolicking in nothing but shaving cream.

Suddenly, this year’s fun in the Mexican sun was interrupted by an abstinence-only public service announcement approved by the Arizona Legislature, produced by the state Department of Health Services and funded with our tax dollars.

The ad featured head shots of a half-dozen Jennifer Aniston look-alikes, taking turns delivering the following lines:

“To all you guys out there who see me as just another sex story to brag about to your friends: reality check. You know that thing between your legs? That is not what makes you a man. Not now. Not ever. But don’t worry. There’s a solution for guys like you. It’s called a blow-up doll. Personally, I’d rather keep my self-respect than sleep with you.”

The commercial ended and the screen filled again with writhing, near-naked coeds in Cancún. Earth to Arizona Legislature: “Come again?”

Welcoming you to downtown’s favorite live theater is a most unusual sight. There you’ll find an even dozen men, women and children having a great old time dancing their days and nights away. And not a stitch of clothing on one of ’em. It must keep them young because they’ve been doing it for decades now and they never get any older. Since 1974, as a matter of fact. “Dance” is an installation by John Waddell that was originally in the courtyard of Phoenix Civic Plaza before moving to its current home at the Herberger. The statues are a particularly joyous bit of public artwork. They appear to be having a blast. But isn’t it about time someone got them some sunscreen?

Just let other cities try to brag about theirs. Boston’s ain’t nothin’ but beans. Philadelphia has a little tinkling bell. New York? Only a shriveled-up old apple core.

When you are talking balls, you are talking Phoenix. Not just any balls, either. We are talking big ones. Three feet tall and just as big around. And made out of solid concrete to boot. Strong enough to stand up to a desert summer without breaking a sweat.

Yup, right out in front of BOB for all the world to see. Along the corner of Fourth Street and Jefferson you’ll find almost a dozen stone baseballs welcoming you to the home of the Diamondbacks. A perfect spot to grab a photo of the baseball-loving young’un on the way into the game. Are you man — or woman — enough to straddle ’em?

Now you can learn all the exciting ins and outs of this fabulous, high-paced career! If you want to be a model, or just gawk at one, get yourself to this copper-topped office complex, sit at an outdoor table and monitor the action!

Most afternoons, you’ll see a photographer, usually with a British accent, shouting at his subject, “Great! Great! You’re giving me great stuff!” You can sympathize with his numerous lackeys, buzzing around in the blazing-hot sun with huge silver screens at half-mast, forever fussing with light meters. Hopefully, you’ll be in the company of some deliciously catty women who’ll quickly size up the competition and snipe, “She ain’t all THAT!”

Although this location no longer offers an unobstructed view of Camelback Mountain as it had in seasons past, who’s gonna notice on an earring spread? They keep coming back anyway. All the better for you to hang around at a distance — like a model busybody!

Bridges have been rising out of the ground and spanning new freeways with blurring speed in the past five years. But this one slows the eye to a memorable crawl across the landscape. Its inviting grayish profile of mountain peaks shows us what’s new in galvanized chain-link fencing. And the craftsmanship that made mountains appear in this 260-foot span of woven metal is the finest we’ve ever seen. J&L Highway Construction, which actually formed the bridge’s distinctive chain-link cage, was responsible for that. A design team of engineer Seetha Ramahia and Tempe artist Laurie Lundquist came up with the idea for the bridge. And the Phoenix Arts Commission’s Percent for Art program and ADOT paid for it. The result is truly one of a kind.

Going to the dog track needn’t cost you a bundle. Just grab your dead presidents and head to Phoenix Greyhound Park for one of the pup palace’s legendary weekend swap meets.

Each weekend, hundreds of vendors gather to sell all the crap they couldn’t unload at their garage sales — old tools, rusty golf clubs, eight-track hi-fi’s, and ancient, tube-powered Zeniths. Hundreds more vendors sell newer things like packaged socks, luggage, clothes, art and furniture — the list is endless.

And if you don’t happen to be in the market for someone else’s castoffs or a 99-cent liquidation sale? Well, haggling over the price of old eight-tracks is just part of the fun.

For pure people-watching, the dog track is the flea market equivalent of Rodeo Drive. A seat near the snack bar provides a primo view of the crowd, and a live band sometimes plays background music for an hour or two. A pan flute and guitar duo recently hypnotized passers-by with soft, mellow rhythms as worn-out shoppers guzzled beer and scarfed nachos.

As the time passes, so does a passing parade of diverse humanity, the likes of which you’re unlikely to assemble en masse anywhere else in town — or at least until the state fair rolls around again. And where else in town can you gawk at the myriad forms of your fellow man while getting your ears pierced on a lawn chair?

There may be worse names for a store selling used children’s clothing, but right now, none to springs to mind. Except, perhaps, Kiddie Worn — but that would be in really poor taste, wouldn’t it?

Granted, watching local politicians scarf down a BLT or digging into a caesar salad is not everyone’s idea of a great time. If you, however, find yourself in this camp, hie yourself to Tom’s Tavern, the pol-spangled trough that is to the Phoenix governmental set what the Brown Derby used to be to Hollywood stars.

We recently took a Valley newcomer to Tom’s Tavern for lunch, promising a good chef’s salad and the chance to see more big-name ballot-box celebs than you could shake a recall petition at. We were not disappointed.

Governor Jane Dee Hull lunched with state Representative John Wettaw. Hull sent the rest of her dessert tray over to state Senator Scott Bundgaard, who stopped to chat with Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan. State liquor czar Howard Adams dined on the patio, two tables over from us.

And the chef’s salad? If it ever runs for election, it’ll get our vote, too.

It’s been months since the GOP presidential primaries, but those who know him best — his constituents — are still slack-jawed at the way Arizona’s senior senator was able to capture the hearts, minds and money of America’s moderates during the race for the Republican nod.

McCain fell short on primary wins, but his Straight Talk campaign won’t soon be forgotten; history professors will teach it as the best example of modern American grassroots politicking. Consider: The man with the reputation in Arizona for terrorizing anyone in his path sweet-talked national reporters into writing glowing accounts of his every move. The guy who didn’t lift a finger to get campaign finance reform passed in his own state made himself the champion of such reforms on a national level — all the while collecting millions from special interests with business before McCain’s Senate Commerce Committee. A senator who all but ignores his home state is able to win reelection time and again.

You may not like him, but you gotta hand it to him: John McCain is one masterful politician.

Readers’ Choice: John McCain